Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche bizarrely claimed on Wednesday that “people that hurt police get money all the time,” in a wild defense of President Donald Trump’s new “anti-weaponization fund.”

Blanche sat down with CNN’s Paula Reid to discuss his department’s new $1.776 billion fund set up as part of a settlement of Trump’s $10 billion lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service over the 2019 leak of his tax returns. The Department claimed the fund was meant “for victims of lawfare and weaponization to be heard and seek redress,” leading many to question whether Jan. 6 rioters could receive money through the fund.

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) and Vice President JD Vance were grilled by reporters over that possibility, with both men refusing to state definitively if those who attacked cops would be excluded from receiving payments.

The acting Attorney General was also pressed by Reid on the issue, with the CNN reporter asking Blanche to clarify his remarks on Tuesday to a Senate subcommittee, where he refused to rule out that use of the fund.

“Would you be okay with people who were convicted of hurting police getting taxpayer money?” asked Reid.

While Blanche also refused to explicitly exclude the possibility, his explanation of why that was the case began on an odd note, with Blanche insisting that the situation Reid was describing was actually a common occurrence.

He said:

Just to be clear, people that hurt police get money all the time. Okay? There’s a process where, where if you are, if you believe you have your rights violated, you can apply for funds, you can sue, you can file a claim, you can go to court. And some of those cases, the state, the government, the federal government settles those cases. It’s abhorrent to ever, ever touch a law enforcement officer, which is why anytime anybody does that and it’s a federal officer we’ll prosecute them. But that’s a completely different question with whether an individual is allowed to apply for a claim. Whether they’ll get a claim, who depends. I can’t– it would not be appropriate for me to talk about absolutes. Like, “Absolutely not. Under no circumstances.” I mean, we can talk about hypotheticals until we’re blue in the face, but that really wouldn’t be fruitful.

Harry Dunn and Daniel Hodges, two police officers who were on duty at the Capitol on Jan. 6, filed a lawsuit on Wednesday to block the Trump administration from using the fund to pay rioters. They claimed in their suit that the fund itself “endangers the lives” of officers like Dunn and Hodges by encouraging those who committed crimes during the insurrection to continue to do so, as well as financing “the violent operations” of those who consistently threatened the lives of the officers years after the attack.

Watch above via CNN.

New: The Mediaite One-Sheet "Newsletter of Newsletters"
Your daily summary and analysis of what the many, many media newsletters are saying and reporting. Subscribe now!